the latest news in the week's top stories go chavez declared the winner of venezuela's presidential vote by the national electoral commission in a tight race with opposition candidate to retake it relates. or are showing between syria and turkey as fresh violence hits damascus with a car bomb exploding outside police headquarters. italian fury over mounting cuts descends into clashes while civil servants marched for their jobs in spain.

seven am in moscow treasure bring you today's top stories and a look back at the week's news here on r t news just into our teeth go chavez wins the venezuelan presidential vote is the national electoral commission has announced a longstanding socialist leader leader has defeated opposition candidate enrique kept the election campaign has been a fierce battle between both candidates with both men that want to respect the outcome u.s. media coverage of the presidential race in venezuela has been criticized as biased against chavez asia times correspondent pepe escobar thinks washington would have white a willing partner in caracas not an intractable leader. it is the other election which is shows these well i guess washington which is the united states didn't love to have sex repeat the story and stayed in the next level like it was the sure job

is before these two years but this is amazing because if you follow the mainstream media india way in the west in the year and even the bulls still south america big private meetings also better even is where labor is about to. you know it's for instance show is the most big one night head of state in modern times even more than said that it was saying that i had a fat sketch that you made it it's amazing. these private groups at least of them they are aligned with washington just like this is the mission that you see sometimes it is we'll show always that chavis is there just as a communist or even a fascist or even to me like a communist justice it's completely absurd. party correspondent lucy caffein obviously in caracas she's posting the latest news and photos you can follow her twitter feed for the latest updates on the presidential election it's a two for her live report coming your way later this hour. a car bomb exploded near

a police headquarters in the syrian capital damascus killing at least one person state t.v. is calling it an act of terror the blast the latest new series of attacks aimed at security personnel and government institutions with damascus in particular a frequent target this as syria and turkey exchanged nother round of artillery shells across the border artie's middle east correspondent paula sleazier has the details. for the third straight day ticket artillery has fired into syria this coming just minutes off to a mortar had landed in tickets tenantry fired from syria we understand that at least eight mortars were fired from to key into syria now according to the mayor of the take border town where this shell landed he says that there was very little damage other than damage to a grain depôt but other than that it landed in an empty field and there were no reports of injuries it is the same board of an age when five members of the same family who killed wednesday that this two women and three children when

a mortified from syria now ended in a maze intentional building at the same time we're hearing continuing words from the prime minister that he will not allow these kind of events to go unprovoked he says that if pushed he will dictate war and that has been quite a stir. a message from him now there is going concern that this instability and on the turkish syrian border will result in regional instability there's also concern by numerous critics who have put forth the argument that they believe that the shells that are being fired from the syrian side are being fired liberty in each remember that this rewarding area on the syrian side between syria and turkey is an area that is controlled by the rebels and as such it is possible that their firing these these rounds deliberately to provoke turkey to go to nato and call for a foreign intervention of course this is something that many people are increasingly concerned about the situation in syria off to eighteen months of fighting is showing no lacing up there continues to be almost daily blasts in the

capital city of damascus and they're particularly cost suicide bombings have become almost the norm the same situation is happening in the leftover the commercial hub of the country in the north and they we're hearing of continuous heavy fighting and also in recent days and in recent weeks we've witnessed a rise in prices start bombings there were also receiving a twitter feed from the shah adnan out of now he is a sunni muslim preacher and they salafist needed has become almost a symbol of the rebels feinstein syria he says that they have captured the cousin of the syrian president bashar assad we have no information on that at this stage and no way of actually being able to independently prove it russia continues to play a mediating role they are expecting that the e.u. in nato envoy to syria could be in russia later this month and as such will be there for talks but russia is edging calm and saying that this kind of escalation in tensions along the turkish syrian border is completely unacceptable in any kind

of cross border operations are to be found upon work a lot a lot of sharmeen are why do you think the action could be turkey's under the radar approach to intervention in syria. turkey declared war in syria long time ago the arab league. and endeavor to lose the war they supplied weapons and they've supplied training assistant they've harbored you know gunmen in jihad just on their territory so so you know turkey is at a situation now crossroads where they cannot seem to get the international system they need to sort of you know do a last question against the assad regime and they cannot get a u.n. security council resolution to authorize these things and this may be you know setting the groundwork a pretext for a backdoor into military intervention because of course turkey venkat can call on its nato allies to to assist and it's essential to the nato allies who would anyways do you know a military confrontation with the assad regime if there was

a u.n. security council resolution and there are questions about this is this the false why you know operation to to sort of set the grounds for military intervention there been many false narratives over syria i think this is just another one. bahrain is keeping up its crackdown on peron protests causing more fierce clashes between police and demonstrators friday tear gas and water cannons were used to disperse crowds violence started after the funeral of a young protester who died in custody dubious or demanding equal rights from the sunni monarchy and the release of political prisoners one of them a prominent human rights defender newbill rashad has gone on a hunger strike he was briefly released to attend his mother's funeral but not allowed to mourn further with his family whose job is serving a three year jail term for participating in illegal gatherings meanwhile former c.n.n. reporter amber a lot of things for a documentary on what's happening in bahrain was inserted by the. brain is paying

c.n.n. to create content that shows bahrain in a favorable light even though c.n.n. says this contents you know is editorially independent it doesn't see it can affect that well we've seen that with this documentary not airing and also with the constant struggle i had at c.n.n. to get bahrain coverage accurate bahrain coverage of the human rights abuses on air while i was there what c.n.n. is doing is they're essentially creating what some people have termed infomercials for dictators and that's the sponsored content that they're airing on c.n.n. international that's actually being paid for by regimes and governments and this violates every principle of journalistic ethics because we're supposed to be watchdogs on these governments we're not supposed to allow them to be paying customers who are able to kind of dodge our minders and sneak into some of the villages and actually see these atrocities patients who had run out of the hospitals that were shot up with birdshot and as we were heading back out of these

villages we were violently detained by security forces and buffering and luckily my female producer and i were able to hide some disks in our broads and we were able to actually get out of the country with this content so you can imagine covering surprise when we got back to the u.s. . and this content was airing on c.n.n. and right after that is when the phone calls started coming into the network complaining about me and trying to get my coverage off the air turning back to our top story now declared the winner in the presidential election in venezuela were citizens already celebrating his victory with fireworks our correspondent lucy cuffing of joins us live from caracas with the latest so lucy what's going on where you are before we were talking and i heard some fireworks in the background tell us more. well that's right as you can probably see and at least here behind me the city is going wild this is just moments after the venezuelan electoral council announce that who go chavez will indeed remain the president for a third term he'll be leaving the country for another six years we've seen an

eruption i don't know if you can actually see behind me but the fireworks have been going off there's been people driving around in the streets people have gathered on the presidential palace to just celebrate this this victory for who go childless but we do have to keep in mind that this was an incredibly closely contended election the president had won by about fifty four percent of the of vote with about ninety percent of the districts reporting the results that means about a million vote difference with his opponent enrique the premiss what that says is that although the country has voted the people have voted to continue on the course that hu bunch of us put them on which is socialist policies policies that essentially have nationalize the oil industry have have used revenue from industries to help the people in these so-called twenty first century socialism policies and that does also say that there's a lot of discontent here and a lot of frustration with some of the problems that have emerged in venezuela for example corruption as well as unemployment and various economic policy is now about

the selection was what's been really fascinating to watch especially after coming from the west is the amount of excitement and their energy that we've seen on the streets here people have actually taken to the streets at about three am hours before the polls even though. opened to celebrate to line up while we were covering the actual voting process there were lines going literally around blocks for the for the election voting places people had to really try to get there early to build up the momentum and try to get their candidate pushed forward as early as possible despite that polls had stayed open much later than expected it's been a really really closely contended election and for quite some time it was unclear who would emerge as the winner but of course as we are reporting president hugo chavez will be leaving the country for another six years now let's look at a little bit of that the difference between the two candidates and what this election really means for the future of the country chavez has really radically

changed both venezuela and the region he's represented policies that again focused sort of people oriented projects where you take revenues from industries you convert them put that back into the programs at the same time and have only resulted in reducing the crime rate that hasn't resulted in solving a lot of the big social issues that continue to plague this country it really is going to be interesting to see how the president is going to tackle that really given i'm sorry to be interrupted by fireworks here but again especially given the fact that the country is so polarized is so divided at the moment but again president who has will be in office for another term and just one of the question i want to ask you we talk about these celebrations that you're hearing on the streets there is there any tension that you're hearing there was a report in the guardian newspaper about how the national guard is up to trolling the streets with armed with tear gas and other weaponry is there a sense of tension there is there a sense that because this is so close there could be it could spill over into

violence. absolutely and we have seen the national guard we've seen both the militias that support president chavez as well as the official military and national guard patrolling the streets it's been fairly calm right now but again as you mentioned because it's such a closely elected contested election it's quite possible that we will see tension in the coming weeks and months we have to keep in mind at the inauguration won't happen till january and it is going to there's a lot of potential for for the supporters who are discontented with with president chavez to take to the streets both candidates when they voted earlier today had promised to stick to the election results you can see that if the electoral count council decided the way it did but at the same time that does not mean that they can necessarily control their supporters and with such a highly polarized divided electorate there is some possibility that we will see tensions we certainly won't see the country calming down anytime soon and yes as you mentioned there may be celebrations right now from the childless but it's a very tense moment for the country as a whole because again

a lot of people are energized a lot of people want to get their voice heard their policies heard and it really remains to be seen how the country is going to be able to balance the needs of this highly polarized divided electorate alright emotions clearly running high in caracas coffin of there with the latest updates thank you very much and stay on top of this for us of course throughout the day. the pakistani military has blocked an anti-u.s. motorcade rally that was heading toward the country's tribal hub along the afghan border the protests was led by cricket legend turned politician imran khan and attracted thousands of people a large number of civilians have died in u.s. drone strikes and khan is calling for an end to the killings robert naiman an activist and analyst pushing for reforms to u.s. foreign policy civilians have become the main victims from drone attacks not high level militant leaders as washington claims but president obama's counterterrorism advisor has claimed that civilian deaths from drone strikes are exceedingly rare

well we do know that the bureau of investigative journalism in the u.k. has counted somewhere between four hundred hundred meter. civilian deaths since two thousand and four from u.s. drone strike so in fact far from being exceedingly rare the civilian deaths are normal that's a regular thing and in fact there are seven to fifteen times as many as the death of these so-called top level terrorist leaders so the actual policy is something completely different from the story that's being told in united states the stories being told the united states is zob about targeting top level terrorist leaders and it's not killing civilians the reality is the total opposite of that the un special rapporteur tour on extradition will and execution has said that you know if these reports are true about what the u.s. is doing they would constitute war crimes. the u.s. involvement in neighboring afghanistan is also seen thousands of casualties among

civilians as well as nato troops or look at the legacy of the alliance action there eleven years on and its consequences. but for south korea side an agreement with the u.s. allowing it to possess missiles capable of reaching any part of north korea a previous arms deal with washington restricted souls' ability to develop or deploy long range rockets leaving many targets and the reclusive communist state out of reach but tim beal an asian specialist from london thinks the real goal could be behind the deal could be to threaten china. this new range will take them into china and that i think has been the sticking point zero zero. zero zero interest of the americas and now increased to it. sooner so it was the minute election everything to do with elections came from the south korea's point of view they want to build in capability for their next. in december

which conceivably might have been more peaceful government i think this. signing has not been very much to do with that satellite test is just the problem of long discussions and both sides thinking this is it time for electoral reasons to come to an agreement to to extend the list in a certain range there is a certain reason talk for concern i mean more missiles around them there is a danger of things that basically don't really think it makes any any peaceful difference to the balance of balance of power in east asia on me in america's favor is our greatest failure north korea is a very weak in terms real military terms and we have to see this within the context of all american strategy to contain china and sturdy anger mounting in europe a civil servants take to the streets for

a second day on sunday in madrid trade unions gathered thousands to demand an end to cutbacks in the public sector and privatization of public services italy also seeing its fair share of action this week led by students from clashed with police thousands marched in major cities calling for the government to save schools not banks in rome up to six policemen were injured as students hurled stones at them and tried to rush a police van meanwhile in venice independence supporters marched saturday to demand the region separate from where all the unrest is prompting investment banker patrick young to say the e.u. could be headed toward collapse. the european union constantly believes it knows what's best for all of its client states therefore it pushed countries like ireland into a below it in order to basically appease french and german borrowers there are absolutely no positive results from what the e.u. has done over the course of the last five or ten years indeed basically the history of the euro is not a horribly soiled exercise in effectively breaching the people and trying to

destroy economies the european union has several fundamental problems ultimately it is a very rich area with a great deal of resources the difficulty is it's very difficult to start a business it's very difficult to run a business if you're successful at a business they're going to tax you to death and in the meantime they're all running absolutely ridiculous communist era sized socialist states the truth is western europe is bankrupt it cannot afford to have the government be the major economic actor in the system and therefore just as we saw russian communism collapse so too we're seeing the death of western european socialism october seventh eleven years ago the u.s. led war in afghanistan started more than three thousand alliance troops have died in the conflict most of them americans far more afghan civilians have also lost their lives international affairs commentator rick rose off from stop nato thinks the alliances foster discontent among the afghan people. precious little has been

accomplished in only positive sense of course by the the western military intervention an occupation in afghanistan. most of the arguably the only accomplishment dubious as it is that opium production of skyrocketed under the watch of the us and nato in afghanistan you know evidently the afghan people are not on developing foreign boots on the ground and no particularly after such a prolonged period of the so-called green on blue attacks are an indication that the rank and file of the the afghan population would like to see us in their nato allies or the us in their nato allies vacate the country this quickly as possible and that none of this. debacle would have occurred in the first place out of not been for the card in the reagan administration's fear of the war which you know a disaster to make in regional and other times she's inside the country and is an in essence led to thirty four year war in afghanistan and we have to place the

blame where it belongs you know this is the result of us intervention going back to the late one nine hundred seventy s. turning now to some other stories making headlines across the globe libya's recently elected prime minister has been forced to stand out after a no confidence vote from parliament stuff or failed to win a second time lawmaker approval for a new cabinet the initial capital lineup was rejected thursday protesters stormed the building calling for the prime minister's resignation or was the country's first elected leader after last year's overthrow of colonel gadhafi. an alleged palestinian militant was killed and nine others injured by an israeli air strike in gaza aircraft targeted two motorcyclists that israel claims were jihad is plotting a terror attack against troops and civilians witnesses identified one is a member of a palestinian militant group three children who are among the injured. sudan's

president has ordered land in a river. border crossings with south sudan reopened this as the two countries presidents last month signed deals on security and cooperation held by experts as the signal of the end to a long running tension the two nations broke apart july of last year after decades of civil war a private california based firm space x. has assessed fully launched the maiden flight of its dragon cargo ship currently the russian cosmic drone baikonur is the only large facility sending foreign astronauts up to the international space station space x. is working on transforming the unmanned dragon vessel into a space ship that could carry astronauts up to the i s s brian weeden from the secure world foundation thinks it may be years before private firms though can compete with the russian space program and space x. still has a long ways to go before it can prove that it can carry humans safely to and from the our sister station there's a chance that nasa can perhaps you know contract for these basic services to and

from the inner space station to these private companies which would then allow nasa to focus its money and its efforts on some of the other aspects exploration such as perhaps going back to the moon i think in certain areas for example provide a basic transportation to and from the space station these days commercial private companies can provide its meters and competition but there are other areas you know long term exploration of the moon and mars and beyond where for the time be you're probably just still see a lot of state run companies. finally in the news block a misunderstanding is left a young russian man badly beaten and in a hospital bed the student who'd been detained on charges later dropped is now facing a lengthy and uncertain recovery after being brutally beaten by inmates at a canadian juvenile detention center his family and friends say the country's authorities are doing anything to help or he's probably boycott reports. a trip to study english in canada gone horribly wrong twenty four year old denise teller

cough arrived in calgary in june eager to learn about the country and make new friends it was at this language school those friends would quickly turn to enemies with a misunderstanding over a girl she was charged with making threats and placed in calgary's room on center i believe we're going to stay safe like you were just tell me. you know larry you know a cool place now that you know what not to buy or. something i mean. i don't know why it was a big misunderstanding while his family in moscow tried to scrape together the bail money things took a turn for the wass cellmates brutally attacked him jumping on his head repeatedly after months on a life support machine denise recently retained consciousness doc to say he's in a vegetative state his adoring family is devastated by the lane go no

eating on his arm you have been there already and you really enjoy it if your. lawyer is so far away from it or and you know it's very slow here. the charges that denise faced have now been dropped which in turn meant the detention center was no longer responsible for his medical bills leaving his family facing a financial nightmare on top of the emotional one local media campaigning to raise funds for denise's ballooning medical bills there are some will watch action. or. call them to call it bull or. general. or what they were or what we all hope. denise isn't the only victim to emerge from this facility last month another man

christopher kirk suffered a lacerated spleen and a broken nose after a similar attack while in custody. very often in sharpening all we were and into not a lot but. you know when we were there even going to remember them in the war i mean. how are the young man so eager to find out about life in canada studying english like he didn't initially set out is now a distant prospect fast he'll once again have to learn the basics how to walk feed himself and speak his native russian denise's family can only hope that the country where this brutal attack took place provides him with the help that we so desperately needs. new mom cross-talk still to come here on r t stay with us.

welcome to the. science technology innovation hall the list of elements from around russia we've got the future covered. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

offers an air show and an issue museum what's the matter you. most of the residents never profited from the performances you'll see him coming our signature there when you look up and there's one check in on you he's an alpha beta gamma you know with all the the fine now trying to treat his leg i don't know what's going on so you can pinpoint. the dirt right now. doug shells become income mortal danger and a piece of art. studio exemption. in making him free. and. on our team.

more news today vorlon says once again flared up if these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china corporations are all today. if. russia would be soo much brighter than if you knew about songs from phones to pressure. from stunts on t.v. don't come. cheap.